To enhance flexibility and performance of computer systems, virtualization can be utilized in which a hardware platform is shared by multiple virtual environments that include corresponding operating systems (sometimes referred to as guest operating systems). The virtual partitions of the shared hardware platform are sometimes referred to as “virtual machines” or “virtual appliances.”
When multiple guest operating systems are deployed in a shared platform, conflicts may arise in various requests that may be made by the guest operating systems. For example, the guest operating systems may attempt to invoke power management features, such as by submitting requests to place a computer system into a low power mode, such as a hibernate mode or standby mode. However, conventionally, efficient mechanisms have not been provided to enable proper coordination of these types of power management requests, and conflicts may arise. For example, a first guest operating system may request that the computer system be placed into a low power mode (in which processing power is unavailable for performing computing tasks), while a second guest operating system may still be active and executing computing tasks. If the computer system were to be placed into a low power mode in response to the request from the first guest operating system, then the second guest operating would no longer be able to continue performance of its computing tasks.